Vogue: 4 Surprising Foods That Affect Your Baby During and After Pregnancy

Here, four surprising dietary recommendations to have on your radar and discuss with your ob-gyn at checkup time.

1. Consider tabling artificial sweeteners.

A new study published this month in JAMA Pediatrics found that women who consumed at least one artificially sweetened beverage per day during pregnancy were twice as likely to have an overweight child at 1 year of age compared to those who skipped these beverages. “One possible explanation is that our metabolism is programmed in utero, and consistent exposure to these artificial sweeteners could change how your body reacts to actual sugar, causing increased weight gain,” says Meghan Azad, PhD, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of pediatrics and child health at the University of Manitoba. The findings, which are part of the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development Study, did not show any correlation with fetal body weight, which suggests the effects of artificial sweeteners could surface later in life and possibly have a lasting impact.

While there have been many media reports concerning the discovery by Canadian astronomers of unusually fast radio bursts from faraway objects in the Universe, none have noted that one of the co-discoverers is here at the U of M